


Resume

by getsyncedup



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-10-01 00:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20455748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getsyncedup/pseuds/getsyncedup
Summary: Jeremy wants to “hang out” with Michael for the first time since the play—except they’re not friends, so it isn’t even hanging out, and Jeremy’s a wreck, and the SQUIP won’t shut up.





	Resume

They’re making plans to hang out.

That’s the easiest way to rebuild things: hovering over a computer screen, watching VHS rips of bad nineties sci-fi, fumbling the buttons on a game controller with joysticks that’ve drifted to hell and back, and pretending like yesterday was the last time they spoke on actual friendship terms, not sometime in September.

Jeremy doesn’t remember the actual day they last talked. He can’t remember a lot of things from that time of the year.

_That’s recursive memory erasure. You’re less likely to rely on old habits if you don’t remember what those old habits are_.

He shakes his head and tried to focus on his phone screen. The blue line blinks, waiting for him to type, and he’s a little happy there’s at least one piece of technology that won’t give him a mental smack to the face if he lets his guard down. Michael is asking what day they should get together.

It feels gross to talk about it like that. _Get together_. They aren’t middle-aged parents making plans to have dinner while their children go to the mall. But they aren’t friends, either, so Jeremy figures it isn’t “hanging out,” even though that’s the Michael-est thing to call it. They’re testing the water. That’s the point of all this: to see if they can pick up where they left off, like the past two months have been a pause screen.

He writes back that he’s free tomorrow after school.

The grey typing bubble appears, and Jeremy’s stomach aches the way it does when he’s looking at the first question of a test, or calling to book himself a haircut. He’s nervous. He shouldn’t be nervous. It’s only Michael.

But he has no idea what Michael’s going to say. That’s the scary part.

_can’t_, Michael’s text bubble says. _i have work. wednesday?_

_You have a job?_ Jeremy types, before he can stop his fingers.

And then there’s a very unwelcome scoff in the back of his head, close enough to his ears that it tickles, but far enough to be brushed off as hearing things. _Of course he has a job, _the scoff says._ Independence is important to upperclassmen in high school—according to your memories, that’s why Michael got his driver’s license last summer._

He doesn’t like the SQUIP having access to Michael thoughts, or Michael memories, or anything to do with Michael, but it’s the price tag that came with the Mountain Dew Red. It can’t block Michael from him, but then he can’t block Michael from it.

The grey typing bubble is back on the screen, sitting for longer, and Jeremy wonders if Michael’s going to cancel their plans then and there, because if Jeremy’s enough of an asshole to not know anything about his best friend’s job, why should they be hanging out? Why should they do anything together if they don’t know each other?

_Ex-best friend_, the SQUIP reminds him.

Then a text appears. _yeah!! it’s at that electronics repair place by the mall. i’m learning to fix computers!!! it’s rad!!!!!!_ Then another. _i mean its not as exciting as the time we fixed the ps2 we found in your basement but it’s something right?_

It’s like Michael squeezed the celebration emoji into every single word of that sentence.

Jeremy remembers that kind of Michael, the one that used to meet him every day at lunch, the one he played video games with and the one who drove him everywhere and the one who sat by his hospital bed, eyes rapid-fire blinking at the sight of Jeremy waking up for the first time in two weeks. It’s happy Michael.

_That’s fun!_ Jeremy texts back. _Okay so I can do Wednesday if you’re not working_.

Did that sound pushy? Like he didn’t want Michael to be working?

The SQUIP emulates a disappointed sigh. _You sound like a twelve-year old girl. I guarantee Michael will glean no ill sentiment from what you just texted. I wouldn’t have let you send it, otherwise_.

“Could you, like, shut up?” Jeremy says aloud. “Just for five minutes? So I can do this on my own?”

_No. You need the help._

“I think I’m doing fine by myself, actually.”

_If I hadn’t intervened, you would’ve talked yourself into an anxiety attack at the beginning of your conversation with Michael. If I continue coaching you, there’s an eighty-seven percent chance you’ll successfully make plans with him_. It stops. _That is the goal, isn’t it?_

“Yeah.”

_Then allow me to proceed._

Michael texts back. _wednesday after school works. you want me to drive you?_

Jeremy ignores the whisper in his ear and types _Yep! :)_

And with a single text, it means Michael will be back in Jeremy’s basement like nothing ever happened. In Jeremy’s stomach, there’s that excited-nervous smoothie of emotion, which is basically the way he feels about a lot of things, except now he feels that way about Michael, the one guy he almost definitely always knew how he felt about.

It’s weird.

#

Michael’s car smells different.

“It’s an air freshener,” he says, tapping some little plastic-liquid thing tucked in his air vent. “‘Cause my mom kept saying my car smelled like weed. Well, she didn’t say weed. But she bought me that.”

Jeremy misses the weed smell. Without it, his nose is basically in a different car.

One of the things they always used to do was sit and smoke weed in this car. (Actually, Michael smoked, while Jeremy tried it exactly once each time, had a coughing fit, and then panicked about whether his dad would smell the smoke on him.) But now all those memories are masked under a plastic-tight layer of lavender blossom, so they might as well have never existed.

Jeremy’s thumb traces the seatbelt. The car looks the same, at least, crumbs and McDonald’s wrappers and 7-11 bags from the times they used to buy all the ice cream in the store and spend entire space documentaries eating it all. They’re little markers, reminders, that they did actually have a friendship.

“So I have _Apocalypse_ in my backpack,” Michael says, switching on the car like nothing’s different, nothing’s wrong, “but I also went to GameStop and got literally every shitty-looking PS1 game they had, so that’s a whole evening, at least.” He looks in his rearview mirror and plants his tongue between his teeth, trying to find a gap in the crowd of high schoolers so he can back out of his spot. “Um. So what sounds good to you?”

“You kept _Apocalypse_?”

Michael stops, his hand above the gearshift. “It’s my favorite game, dude.”

“Right. Yeah.” Except it was the first game they ever bought together, squeezed in the back of Michael’s moms’ Subaru, twelve dollars between the two of them. Through missing teeth and stuttered words, they’d asked the guy at the thrift store for the oldest game he had, and had come home with their favorite. “I just thought—”

“I didn’t stop being a person while you were gone.”

Michael’s back to staring at the mirror, pretending he’s going to back out. Except when the parking lot’s this busy, they’re usually stuck for a while, anyway.

Usually.

There’s an entire two months of Michael backing out his car that Jeremy doesn’t know about. Maybe he ran someone down. Maybe the lot was completely empty and Michael got home by three-fifteen. Maybe there was a different boy in the passenger seat, a better boy, someone who didn’t give up on people who cared about them.

Jeremy reached to unbuckle his seatbelt.

_Don’t. Michael has given you the chance to discuss your current situation. Use it._

_I don’t know what to say_, Jeremy thinks back. _I’m just gonna fuck this up._

_Repeat after me: Michael, I apologize for the way I treated you—_

“_Fuck_ no,” Jeremy says, slapping the dashboard and knocking the air freshener out of place. It lands in a crushed Wendy’s cup. “I—just shut up, okay?”

Michael almost-glares. “I’m trying to talk to you, Jer. Quit being an ass.”

“Not—not you.” He rubs his temple, trying to ignore the throbbing in his head. The SQUIP can’t shock him anymore, not really, but it can still be a little shit when it wants to. “Sorry. I wanna talk.”

“It’s still bothering you?”

“Only if I let it. But… I’m ignoring it right now.” He turns back to Michael and sees another face he’d forgotten about, that tied-back look of concern that always came out when Jeremy ended a math test in tears, or showed up at Michael’s front door at two in morning, eyes red—that look of concern that usually comes with a hug, because Michael can never resist mother-henning for long, but… maybe that’s out of the question, too. “I want things to be okay.”

“Jer. Dude. So do I.”

“Then why aren’t they?” He feels like ripping the sleeve of his sweater, unraveling a thread until the whole thing is in pieces, and then tearing that up, too. Everything is his fault, so how the hell does he punish himself? “Why are you still trying to be my friend?”

“‘Cause I care about you.”

“But I don’t deserve that.”

“Well… yeah, maybe not back then, you didn’t.” Michael faces front again, staring out the windshield, and most of the students are gone. He still doesn’t back the car out. “But back then you also had a piece-of-shit computer controlling your thoughts, right? So maybe it’s not really your fault.”

“It doesn’t control your thoughts. It tells you what to do, and you do it.”

“Are you doing what it tells you to right now?”

“I—” Maybe. He’d made plans at the SQUIP’s instruction, and the SQUIP had talked him through walking to Michael’s car, half because he didn’t know where Michael parked anymore, and half because he’d been considering bailing on the whole evening. “It was trying to tell me how to apologize to you. Just now. But I said no.”

“Then you aren’t listening. Which means you’re trying to be a better person, which means you deserve to be friends with me. I still think you’re rad, dude.” Michael puts a hand out and rubs Jeremy’s shoulder, only gently, just enough to put pressure on something that’s hurting.

Michael’s a bandage.

There are new patches on Michael’s sleeves, a combadge and a little cartoon xenomorph and a dual-bladed lightsaber, and it stings, because Jeremy’s usually the patch consultant, and together the two of them figure out which ones go where, but that hasn’t been his job for two months.

But Michael’s here, and Michael’s willing to talk.

“Can we go buy you patches?” Jeremy says.

And Michael just grins. “Sure, dude.”

**Author's Note:**

> so anyway i’m a big fan of squip hanging around post-bmc doing his thing, commentating, except he can’t control jeremy anymore.
> 
> this is my first time writing from jeremy’s pov so hopefully i did him justice!! he’s always great to explore because even though he got hit the worst by the squip, he also caused the most damage to everyone around him. uwu 
> 
> i feel bad for reducing michael to “guy who comforts jeremy” because michael definitely isn’t obligated to do that at all—but then he’s a very comforting guy and i’d imagine he puts others ahead of him pretty frequently. if i continue this i’ll definitely expand how he’s feeling about everything
> 
> thanks for reading!! pls report any typos/inconsistencies you see (present tense is an ass) and maybe comment or give kudos!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Resume](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20851127) by [klb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/klb/pseuds/klb)


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